Data center consolidation, or more appropriately, optimization, is every CIO's valentine when it comes to saving real money. It's no wonder Feds have such a crush - we spend about $40 billion every year on these processing hunks. But, are we getting more efficient? With the promise of $3-5 billion...
During the recent Hurricane Sandy that blew through the East Coast, it made me wonder if we are really getting the best value out of our investment in our Offsite Disaster Recovery Facility . We spend millions of dollars every year to have a facility that could accommodate a disaster recovery of any...
Yesterday I read a posting on Facebook asking people to choose between 2 different types of candy: FB poll: Baby Ruth or Butterfinger? Many people responded but 90% did not stick to the 2 options that were on the table; many responses were instead ' I like Sevens ' or ' I like Zero Bars '...
Knock, Knock - Who's There? Is Uncle Sam suffering from a false sense of security? We spend one in four precious cyber security dollars on FISMA paperwork - well over $1 billion each year. GAO says HSPD-12 has given us expensive keys with no locks . TIC's fighting with Cloud First. The iPad's...
My first job after college was as a Computer Operator at a big Pharmaceutical Company in South Africa in 1987. I took a great deal of pride in what I was responsible for and did everything and anything to ' DO THE JOB WELL '. Along with the rest of the team, some of my responsibilities were to...
During last week's storm (Isaac) that blew thru Louisiana, we lost commercial power to the Baton Rouge Campus Data Center on Wednesday morning. Our Generators and UPS equipment should have handled this without any issues but an Electrical Breaker issue caused the UPS not to function correctly and...
? Recently, our IT group had quite an interesting experience – a case (if you will) to solve. The Network Team was testing FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) on the new Network Switches they were busy implementing; part of a plan to consolidate I/O traffic over Ethernet to remove Network complexity...
Most of us, at some stage in our lives, have used a funnel to pour liquid from one vessel into another container. The ultimate goal in using the funnel is to get the liquid into a container that has a small opening. What happens when we decide to turn the funnel upside down and try and pour something...
Back in September of 2008, no one in our south Louisiana city was prepared for the wrath and impact that a hurricane would bring to the community. Nor were we prepared for the damage it would cause to the Operations Center at our organization. The Operations Center that was primarily used for hosting...
Data Center Comedy Who thought that DCC stood for Data Center Comedy? Nothing humorous about FDCCI - well, I beg to differ. Meet Data Center Dave . He's MeriTalk's newest creation - shorter and funnier than the Cloudboys . Dave is the Federal Data Center manager. Dave feels like everyone's...
If you want to read something visionary, I just finished The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan . With dramatic changes occurring in the world, often driven by social media, it is amazing to read a book that understood this so well yet was written in 1967. In fact Marshall passed away in 1980...